Latest news with #FidjiSimo
Business Journals
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Journals
Daily Digest: Instacart names new CEO, value of Elon Musk's brain company Neuralink soars
Happy Wednesday, Bay Area. Starting your day with real estate, the Bay Area is leading the Western U.S. region in office investment this year, surpassing $1 billion in year-to-date sales volume, according to a new report from CommercialEdge. In terms of pricing, San Diego tallied the highest sale price in the West and the second highest nationally, averaging $364 per square foot, while San Francisco followed at $325 per square foot, ahead of Los Angeles at $298. Turning to housing, state officials have certified Atherton's housing element as compliant with California law. This comes after the state rejected two previous versions of the housing element and requested changes in February. In other news, immigrants seeking asylum were arrested at immigration courts in Concord and San Francisco on Tuesday, according to advocates and multiple news agencies. Here in the city, plainclothes federal agents detained at least four people Tuesday morning in what were believed to be among the first such arrests at San Francisco Immigration Court. Here's the rest of what's in the local news at midweek. GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events Layoffs roll into Six Flags Six Flags Entertainment will eliminate 135 jobs across its California parks and dissolve all individual park president roles, part of a larger cost-cutting initiative following last year's $8 billion merger with entertainment company Cedar Fair. The layoffs will affect Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, where 19 staffers will lose their jobs. Elon Musk pays $300 million to get Grok in front of Telegram users Elon Musk's startup xAI — which has offices in Palo Alto — is paying the Dubai-based messaging platform Telegram $300 million in cash and stock to roll out its Grok AI chatbot, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced in a post on Wednesday. Telegram, which has over a billion users, will also earn 50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions that are sold on the platform. Sign up for the Business Times' free morning and afternoon daily newsletters to receive the latest business news driving change in San Francisco. Download the free San Francisco Business Times app for breaking news alerts on your phone. People on the Move Instacart on Wednesday appointed business chief Chris Rogers as its new CEO, less than a month after OpenAI announced CEO Fidji Simo as its new head of applications. Rogers joined Instacart in 2019 after after 11 years at Apple and will start on Aug. 15. He will also join the board of directors, and Simo will retain her chair position at the grocery-delivery company. expand Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. Instacart Craig H. Missakian was sworn in Tuesday as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California. Appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Missakian is a Southern California lawyer who worked on the Republican-led committee that investigated the 2012 Benghazi attack. Bank of Marin Bancorp (Nasdaq: BMRC) and Bank of Marin, its wholly owned subsidiary, announced James C. Hale has been elected chair of their boards of directors effective May 21. He succeeds longtime board member Willie McDevitt, who retired after nearly 20 years of service to the Bank of Marin Bancorp and Bank of Marin boards. Funding Watch Elon Musk's Neuralink raised $600 million in a deal that values the brain-mapping company at $9 billion before the new cash, Semafor reported, citing anonymous sources. The startup was last valued at $3.5 billion in late 2023, according to Pitchbook. expand A technician laser-milling a needle designed with custom geometry to enable the Neuralink's R1 Robot to grasp, insert, and release threads of the N1Implant during surgery. Neuralink Hex, a San Francisco-based data-analytics workspace, raised $70 million in Series C funding. Avra led, joined by Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Box Group, Snowflake Ventures, a16z and Amplify. Alameda-based identification management company Cerby announced that it raised $40 million in Series B funding. DTCP led, joined by insiders Okta Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Two Sigma Ventures. Final thought … Could new AI data centers in the Bay Area help drive down customers' PG&E bills? PG&E is extending its investment in downtown San Jose in particular and the South Bay overall as the utility is being flooded with requests for new data centers amid tech's hunger for energy sources to power the AI boom, the Mercury News reports. And for every gigawatt of new data center load, customer bills could decrease by 1% to 2% in the coming years, PG&E estimates. DOWNLOAD the free SFBT app for breaking news alerts on your phone.
Fast Company
3 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Instacart names its current Chief Business Officer Chris Rogers as next CEO
Chris Rogers, Instacart's current chief business officer, is taking over as the delivery giant's next CEO, the company announced on Wednesday. Rogers, who has worked at Instacart since 2019, will take the helm from Fidji Simo on August 15. Simo, who ushered the company through a successful market debut (stock prices are up 53% since its 2023 IPO) after taking the top spot in 2021, will become CEO of applications at OpenAI. 'We chose Chris because the company needs a leader who understands all our partners deeply, has immense operational experience, and can mobilize teams around our vision,' Simo wrote in a note to employees. 'Chris knows this company. He helped shape it. And I know Chris will carry our mission forward with conviction, care, and ambition.' Simo previously told employees the top role would be filled by a member of Instacart's management team. In his current role, Instacart said Rogers 'oversees all aspects of the company's commercial operations—including retailer relationships and expansions, ad sales and R&D, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, Instacart Business, and Instacart Health—with a focus on driving growth at the intersection of brands, retailers, and technology.' Prior to joining Instacart, Rogers spent nearly 11 years at Apple as the managing director for Apple Canada. He also led Apple's carrier channel business and the consumer retail business in Canada. Rogers will be tasked with continuing to grow orders despite ongoing macroeconomic concerns. The company reported first quarter financial results earlier this month, posting strong order growth and total revenue. However, its burgeoning advertising segment where food companies pay for placement in the app could see problems as new tariffs and regulations impact the ad spend. Rogers said in a blog post that the company's strategy and vision wouldn't change.
TechCrunch
3 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Instacart appoints chief business officer Chris Rogers as new CEO
Instacart announced on Wednesday that its chief business officer, Chris Rogers, has been appointed as the company's new CEO. The appointment is effective August 15. Rogers will also join Instacart's Board of Directors. The announcement comes a few weeks after Instacart CEO Fidji Simo shared that she's stepping down to join OpenAI as CEO of Applications. Simo will remain Chair of the Board at Instacart. In his role as Chief Business Officer, Rogers oversaw Instacart's retailer relationships and expansions, Ad Sales and R&D, Partnerships, Mergers & Acquisitions, Instacart Business, and Instacart Health. Rogers joined Instacart in 2019 after nearly 11 years at Apple, where he served as the Managing Director for Apple Canada. He began his career at Procter and Gamble, where he led relationships with Canada's largest national grocery retailers, Instacart says. 'Instacart sits at the center of how people shop, eat, and care for their families — and that's always been what inspires me most about our mission,' Rogers said in a press release. 'Together with our partners, we're transforming the future of grocery shopping, but more importantly, we're helping people solve real, everyday needs. We have a world-class team, deep partnerships, leading technology, and a bold vision for the future, and I'm honored to step in and lead Instacart's next chapter.' In a blog post, Rogers said that Instacart's vision will remain the same under his leadership, and that the company will continue to focus on its 'unwavering commitment to growing the pie for retailers and brands.' He also said that Instacart will work to provide more flexible earnings opportunities for shoppers on its platform. In a letter to employees, Simo stated that Rogers has played a critical role in shaping Instacart and that she will continue to work with him over the coming months to allow for a smooth transition. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW 'We chose Chris because the company needs a leader who understands all our partners deeply, has immense operational experience, and can mobilize teams around our vision,' Simo wrote. 'Chris knows this company. He helped shape it. And I know Chris will carry our mission forward with conviction, care, and ambition. I couldn't be more excited for him to step into the role of CEO and lead Instacart's next phase of growth.'
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Somite AI Raises $47M Series A To Reinvent Cell Replacement Therapy
Regenerative medicine and therapeutic stem cell therapy to regrow damaged cells as treatment for ... More disease Startup Somite AI announced today that it has raised over $47 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to about $60 million. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from SciFi VC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Fusion Fund, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, TechAviv, Harpoon Ventures, and prominent angel investors such as Fidji Simo, the new CEO of Applications at OpenAI. Legendary investor Vinod Khosla said in a statement: 'Somite AI's foundation models, once fully developed and validated, will not only create value for their own pipeline, but have the potential to reshape the entire field of human cell therapy.' Somite's initial ambition was to design a 'life language model' to drive the development of Somites, the embryonic structures at the origin of the musculoskeletal system, and use them in cell replacement therapy targeting particular ailments such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common hereditary neuromuscular disease. With today's announcement, Somite is publicly broadening its scope, aiming to revolutionize the production of any human cell type through its AI foundation model platform, DeltaStem, to address a broad spectrum of diseases, including metabolic disorders such as Type 1 Diabetes, orthopedic conditions, muscular diseases, and blood disorders. When Somite was established just over a year ago, the founders asked themselves what they would be able to do if they could create any type of human cell. 'We'd be able to replace and replenish any diseased or damaged tissue in the body,' says co-founder and CEO Micha Breakstone, defining their mission as reverse engineering of stem cell biology with artificial intelligence. 'Today, we only know how to reliably produce about 10 types of cells, but there are over 5,000 types of cells in the human cell atlas,' says Breakstone. 'There are more possible ways of creating a specific cell than there are atoms in the universe.' To take a stem cell to a specific mature state, researchers adjust both its environment and the specific biological signals it receives—such as the concentration of a growth factor or a change in pH—learning through step-by-step experimentation the precise sequence of conditions that guide its developmental trajectory. How do you re-engineer a process that takes many years, tens of millions of dollars, and lots of trial and error, with no guaranteed result? As in other domains (e.g., quantum computing error correction), where the 'search space,' the initial set of potential solutions to a problem, is beyond human comprehension (e.g., larger than the number of atoms in the universe), AI could be of great help. However, you need vast quantities of data to successfully apply today's AI or deep learning. The first ingredient in Somite's recipe for developing a cell foundation model is its innovative method for efficiently generating data at scale in a completely natural way. Professor Alon Klein, another Somite co-founder, had a thinking-inside-the-box breakthrough moment when he asked, as Breakstone tells it, 'What would happen if instead of taking the signals to the cells, we take the cells to the signals?' The box or boxes in this case are semi-permeable capsules, each containing a few cells, with minuscule 'windows' allowing the signals to come in and affect the cells. The Somite lab team sends millions of these capsules through many signals or conditions, and each cell-condition encounter is recorded with a barcode. Put all the barcodes together and 'you get an address that correlates with exactly the specific trajectory that the capsule went through, a beautiful model of the development of the embryo,' explains Breakstone. This capsule technology generates cell state transition data at an unprecedented scale, achieving 1000x greater efficiency than existing methodologies. For Jonathan Rosenfeld, another Somite co-founder, this data serves as the basis for developing an AI foundation model for the human cell. Currently, Somite is running experiments at roughly a one-million-condition scale, mapping the developmental paths embryonic cells take under these varied conditions. It plans to reach 10 million conditions by the end of the year. Given the enormous size of the 'search space,' even 100 million would be just a drop in the vast ocean of 'protocols,' all the possible trajectories of cell development. 'However,' says Breakstone, 'it's a drop large enough to learn from, and that's the beauty of deep learning. From a relatively small amount of data, we can develop and train a working model to generate novel protocols that we haven't seen before.' With its DeltaStem platform, Somite aims to overcome key challenges of current lab-based stem cell development—the prohibitively expensive, slow, manual, trial-and-error methods researchers use to guide stem cells toward specific mature cell types. Major obstacles include purity (percentage of desired cells produced), scalability (efficient cell manufacturing at therapeutic scale), and reproducibility (consistent results across batches). 'What AlphaFold did by predicting protein structures, transforming structural biology, DeltaStem aims to achieve for stem cell biology—predicting the conditions needed to precisely generate mature human cell types at scale,' says Breakstone. Unlike biotech companies traditionally engaged in individual drug development, 'TechBio' companies like Somite focus on developing broad technology platforms addressing multiple indications. Their approach is data-driven, and their goal is to develop proprietary AI that reduces costs and risks, shortens drug and treatment development time, and accelerates the shift to more personalized medicine. The success of Moderna and the Nobel Prize awarded to AlphaFold have attracted increased venture capital and corporate investment in applying data and AI to current healthcare challenges, including improving regenerative medicine: 'Artificial intelligence presents broad utility in the discovery and development of new biotherapeutics.' Somite's AI foundation model and platform will help build a future 'where we can create any human cell on demand, like a supply of cellular spare parts to repair or replace diseased or damaged tissue,' says Breakstone.
Time of India
13-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Who Is Fidji Simo? The woman to lead the most important products at Sam Altman's OpenAI
Fidji Simo, former Instacart CEO, has been appointed to lead OpenAI's Applications division, overseeing customer-facing products like ChatGPT and DALL·E. With a strong background in scaling digital platforms and driving revenue at Facebook and Instacart, Simo will focus on real-world applications and monetization strategies. She will also remain chair of Instacart's board while reporting directly to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. OpenAI is leaning into consumer adoption and practical utility with increasing focus on real-world use cases and monetization. It recently also restructured its governance model and scrapped plans to shift into a traditional for-profit corporation. Amid this, it has brought in a high-profile executive to lead the charge in bringing its tools like ChatGPT , DALL·E, and the GPT Store to the masses. Fidji Simo , the CEO of Instacart , has been appointed as the head of OpenAI's Applications division, where she will oversee all customer-facing products. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman said, 'Applications brings together a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world, and Fidji is uniquely qualified to lead this group.' About Fidji Simo Fidji Simo was raised in Sète, a small port town in the south of France, and she was the first in her family to finish high school. 'When she was 20 years old, she interned as a lobbyist for the fishing industry,' reported Marie Claire in 2019. Her early life, far removed from Silicon Valley, shaped a grounded perspective that she carried into the corporate world. Simo earned a master's degree in management from HEC Paris, one of France's top business schools, before starting her professional career at eBay as a strategy manager. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like AI guru Andrew Ng recommends: Read These 5 Books And Turn Your Life Around in 2025 Blinkist: Andrew Ng's Reading List Undo But it was at Facebook (now Meta) where she truly made her mark. Her work at Facebook Joining Facebook in 2011, Simo helped build the company's mobile advertising business from the ground up. She led the development of ad products for News Feed and eventually became the head of the Facebook app itself in 2019. She oversaw everything from Marketplace and Groups to Video and Stories. Her ability to grow products while driving revenue didn't go unnoticed as 'She helped monetise the Facebook app and build the tech giant's advertising business during her stint at Meta,' TechCrunch reported. Simo's work at Instacart led the company to success Simo joined Instacart's board in early 2021 and quickly took over as CEO at a time when the company faced immense competition from Amazon, Walmart, and DoorDash. Under her leadership, Instacart shifted from a delivery-only mindset to a retail tech platform. She led the development of a self-serve ad platform, which generated nearly $1 billion in revenue by 2024, according to Forbes. Products like Carrot Ads and Carrot Insights helped build Instacart into a major player in the retail media space. Her tenure also saw the successful rollout of AI-powered smart carts in physical stores and the IPO of the company in 2023 at a valuation of $10 billion. To ensure profitability, she implemented thoughtful strategies like freezing hiring and renegotiating cloud contracts, laying the groundwork for long-term sustainability. She has a connection to AI and healthcare Simo isn't just a tech leader, she's also an advocate for using AI in life-changing ways. After being misdiagnosed several times before discovering she had postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), Simo founded the Metrodora Institute in 2023. The institute focuses on enrolling patients in research studies that combine genomics, immune profiling, and environmental data to drive more accurate diagnoses. At a conference, she said,'The beauty of AI is in the past, these data sets were very siloed... now... we're going to be able to understand patterns we couldn't understand before.' (Fortune, 2024) Why has she joined OpenAI now? Simo's move into OpenAI comes just as the company is looking forward to real-world applications of its technology. 'Joining OpenAI at this critical moment is an incredible privilege and responsibility,' Simo said in a statement to TechCrunch. 'This organisation has the potential of accelerating human potential at a pace never seen before, and I am deeply committed to shaping these applications toward the public good. ' She will report directly to CEO Sam Altman, while top executives like COO Brad Lightcap, CFO Sarah Friar, and CPO Kevin Weil will report to her. She's not leaving Instacart entirely, though she'll remain chair of the board. What will be her role at OpenAI? With a background in scaling ad platforms and monetizing digital products, she's expected to explore areas like conversational shopping, AI assistants, and targeted advertising tools. Just last month, ChatGPT began offering users the ability to search for and shop products directly within its platform, complete with images, reviews, and purchase links.
